Deviating from the PTS system (Deviation 2: Too much information)

For many topics, but especially for shock, it is critical you keep it simple. If you provide too much information and make the knowledge too complicated, you undermine your learners’ opportunity to develop the confidence to identify familiar problems and apply the solutions they know.

You have learnt about familiar problems and known solutions earlier. Click the button below to open the PTS Trainer Sheet on familiar problems and how to apply known solutions. Read the sheet to refamiliarise yourself with the information.

With shock, we want to ensure that the learner leaves the classroom with a clear understanding of what a seriously ill person or a person who may deteriorate to serious illness looks like. That is their familiar problem.

We also want our learners to become confident applying the simple steps of managing shock consistently throughout the practical session. That is their known solution.

During the practical session, learners will learn how to adapt to the context of different emergency situations, which is applying the known solutions to the familiar problems.

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You deviate from the concept of familiar problems and known solutions if you make it too complicated. For example, if your learner hears you talk about the various causes of shock and what they do to the body they will likely take away the message that identifying the cause in a first aid emergency is necessary.

This means:

• they will not leave the classroom with a clear understanding of one familiar problem, but with a range of complex shock-related problems.
• in a first aid emergency they will likely be nervous because they think they need to identify the right problem. This sets them up to be ineffective and have low confidence.

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